Global standards needed `yesterday' for air travel to rebound: industry group
Airlines press for universal measures involving COVID testing and vaccination
Global airlines are urging governments to agree on universal COVID-19 testing and vaccination standards ahead of an expected restart in international air travel later this year.
The International Air Transport Association is one of several groups working on a mobile application that will help travellers store and manage their verified COVID-19 certifications. As travel restrictions progressively get lifted over the coming months, flyers will need to prove they've been tested and vaccinated, or show proof of exemption, IATA executives said Tuesday.
Differing health measures between countries have created “a mess of inconsistency,” Nick Careen, the IATA senior vice-president who is spearheading the association's Travel Pass initiative, said on a conference call with reporters.
“Customers don't know what's required or where to get it,” he said. “Airlines are left being validators of the information, with no true means to verify it. On top of all of that, it's paper-based. After almost 30 years in this business, I cannot stress enough how chaotic this will be if we do not solve this problem now.”
The IATA is planning to roll out its digital travel pass at the end of March, which it says will give governments the confidence to reopen borders without mandatory quarantine and help accelerate the check-in process.
Failure to adopt international standards “will delay the restart, will impact our recovery and will have airlines taking it on the chin one more time,” said Careen, a former Air Canada executive.
“We need clear policy directions,” he said. “We need some standards to be developed in terms of testing and vaccination certificates, and we need this yesterday.”
The IATA represents 290 airlines in 120 countries. Headquartered in Montreal, it also has offices in Geneva.
The association is working with more than 30 governments — including Panama, Singapore and the U.K. — to push the idea of a restart associated with the travel pass, CEO Alexandre de Juniac said. At least 18 major carriers have signed on to adopt the IATA platform, he added.
“Understanding government plans is important because restarting an airline is not like flipping a switch,” said de Juniac. “Airlines need to ready their crews and aircraft. After a year of lockdowns, this requires checks, co-ordination and training. On top of that, airlines will need time to market the potential services so that the restart of operations will have some passengers.”
Digital applications should include a global registry of health requirements that's both comprehensive and reliable, Careen said. To ensure privacy and security, individual data should only be stored on the consumer's phone and not in a database, he stressed.
“Any solution should put the consumer in control of their own data,” he said.
Newly released IATA figures for January show how urgently airlines need international travel to restart.
While air cargo demand for January hit pre-pandemic levels for the first time, the improvement wasn't enough to offset a further deterioration in leisure traffic. Passenger volumes in January were down 72 per cent compared with two years ago, the IATA said.
Planes globally flew at about 54 per cent of capacity in January, a new all-time low for the month, the association said. February passenger volumes should also be weak, according to IATA chief economist Brian Pearce.
“Airlines are facing a really tough start to the year in the passenger business, which is where the majority of revenue in normal times comes from,” Pearce said. “Unfortunately for the majority of the industry, cargo is just not a big enough business to offset the continuing extreme weakness of the passenger business.”
Cargo normally represents about 10 to 15 per cent of annual airline revenue.
To make matters worse, business travel will probably need “at least a couple of years” to approach pre-pandemic levels, Pearce said. Because of improvements in teleconferencing technology, “some corporate travel just won't return,” he said.
As for leisure travel, the speed of its expected rebound is “heavily related to the vaccination rollout in each country,” said de Juniac, who is set to step down at the end of the month. “The recovery will happen. The point is when, and at what speed.”